


white sails

by achievingelysium



Series: deprive (a hunger games au) [2]
Category: Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins, 僕のヒーローアカデミア | Boku no Hero Academia | My Hero Academia
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hunger Games Setting, Angst, Friendship, Gen, Hunger Games, Hunger Games-Typical Death/Violence, Hurt/Comfort, Minor Character Death, Parental Aizawa Shouta | Eraserhead, hunger games 2 electric boogaloo, owo what's this? a little death?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-29
Updated: 2020-07-29
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:56:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25591657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/achievingelysium/pseuds/achievingelysium
Summary: In the following years fate is kind enough to hide Izuku’s slip of paper from searching fingers. It’s just that—well, it’s just that Izuku is kinder.Her name is Eri. Aizawa Eri, daughter of District Twelve’s only victor; only twelve. She always smiles at Izuku...“I volunteer!”Izuku volunteers to take the place of a little girl in the Hunger Games. District Twelve hasn't had a victor in thirteen years—but Izuku and Katsuki are ready to change that.
Relationships: Aizawa Shouta | Eraserhead & Midoriya Izuku, Bakugou Katsuki & Midoriya Izuku, Eri & Midoriya Izuku
Series: deprive (a hunger games au) [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1852126
Comments: 43
Kudos: 571
Collections: Catlady5001’s Favorite Fanfics, Read it and Weep





	white sails

**Author's Note:**

> One more thanks to my dear friends.
> 
> Edit: You don't have to have read draw and quarter, but the fics in the series do connect!

i.

The first time Izuku attends a Reaping, he is four, and he thinks it is a secret everyone is hiding from him. A game he is not allowed to play in, because he’s too small and too weak. Mom doesn’t talk about it when he asks, and Izuku has learned to stop asking, because her eyes turn sad. 

Kacchan pulls his arm, and the two of them slip unnoticed into the back of the crowd.  _ You can go when you’re twelve,  _ Kacchan says, and twelve is so much older and bigger that they both need to be there. 

The first year Izuku attends a Reaping, twelve-year-old Mirio—who sometimes smiles at Izuku, and tells funny stories—has his name drawn from a glass bowl. Kacchan grips Izuku’s hand so tight it hurts. Twelve suddenly becomes very young. Mirio doesn’t smile. 

And he doesn’t come back. 

It’s a different kind of game, Izuku learns. 

The next time Izuku attends a Reaping, he cries when his name isn’t drawn from a delicate glass bowl. He doesn’t know why relief feels like burning. Kacchan is silent the entire time, and when it’s over he storms away. 

In the following years fate is kind enough to hide Izuku’s slip of paper from searching fingers. It’s just that—well, it’s just that Izuku is kinder. 

Her name is Eri.  _ Aizawa  _ Eri, daughter of District Twelve’s only victor; only twelve. She always smiles at Izuku. 

Izuku sees her standing still as the crowd shifts around her, hushed. Her white hair looks like a surrender as she takes a step forward, and Izuku remembers her in her favorite red dress; and he thinks, suddenly,  _ twelve is so young.  _

“I volunteer!” 

At first Izuku doesn’t realize it’s his own voice, shouting. It bursts from his chest, from a fire crackling inside of him that Izuku hasn’t realized until that moment is there. 

“Deku,” Kacchan hisses next to him. Izuku shakes off Kacchan’s hand as Eri turns, with wide eyes. At the front of the stage, Aizawa stares across a crowd. 

His heart is beating fast in his throat. 

“I volunteer as tribute,” he shouts. He doesn’t want to take the words back. Izuku pushes through the silent ring that’s formed around him, and that’s when Eri starts crying. She grabs his wrist. 

“Don’t, don’t—”

And Izuku thinks,  _ another year.  _

On the stage, Present Mic looks stunned. He stutters something into his microphone, but Izuku can’t hear it over the sound of Mom’s scream. In District Twelve, no one volunteers. 

Izuku is the first. Kacchan is the second. 

ii.

Mom won’t let go of his hands, except to dab at her eyes with a white handkerchief. “You have to come back. You have to.” 

Izuku’s quiet now. It’s been less than an hour since he walked to the Reaping stage and took Eri’s place, but he feels like he’s slipped somewhere between a dream and a nightmare. He doesn’t know if he’ll come back. Izuku glances sideways at Kacchan. There are two tributes from each district, and only one will return. 

Izuku would rather Kacchan than him. 

“Enough,” Aizawa interrupts. His face is unreadable, framed by dark, messy hair. He was victor before Izuku even knew what it meant. “Time to go.” 

“You- you can’t go—” Mom chokes out. 

He brings her hands up, and she moves them to cup his face. Cloth presses against his cheek. Izuku will remember this moment. 

He doesn’t say goodbye, even though he should. He doesn’t promise that he’ll come back, even though a part of him wants to. 

Izuku’s last words to her are, “See me.”

“I’ll watch you,” Mom whispers. She lets go of him. Izuku takes her handkerchief, and watches her get smaller as the train pulls him away. 

iii. 

“So, victor,” Kacchan drawls. “How do we win?”

His eyes are narrowed, calculating. The rest of him is the picture of relaxed, heels kicked up on the table and arms behind his head, ruined only by the bruise forming where Izuku’s knuckles met his cheek. 

Aizawa laughs. He has a glass of alcohol in his hand. “You don’t.” 

There’s a thud as Kacchan’s chair hits the ground again. 

“Let me ask you again,” Kacchan says, looking Aizawa in the eye. “How do we win?”

Not  _ one of us. We.  _

“You shouldn’t have volunteered,” Aizawa says, staring right back. He doesn’t say the same to Izuku. “There are two outcomes. You watch your friend die, or you kill one another.” 

Izuku leans forward, reaching across the table to stop Kacchan. 

“You won,” he says quietly, and for the first time since boarding the train Aizawa looks at him. “Why can’t we?” 

Not  _ one of us _ .  _ We _ . 

“I shouldn’t have won.” 

“Please,” Izuku says, then dares to add, “I volunteered for Eri.” 

Aizawa closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, then reopens them. 

“You don’t know what it’s like,” he says, and then there’s a flash of silver as a knife slams down on the table next to Izuku’s hand. “I’ve watched every tribute after me die. There’s no winning. I thought I was going to be like you, I thought there was hope, and I was wrong. You want me to teach you? I’ll teach you what the Capitol taught me—nothing will ever change.” 

Izuku doesn’t move. Kacchan bares his teeth. 

After a long pause, Aizawa says, “There’s power in being different.”

iv.

Before they are paraded in front of a screaming crowd, before the whole world sees the first boy from Twelve who volunteered, Izuku asks to watch the sixty-first Hunger Games. His stylist acquiesces, and as Izuku is being remade he watches Aizawa thirteen years younger kill another tribute. 

He doesn’t cry. Aizawa doesn’t cry either, when the last cannon fires and he’s announced the victor. 

“Did you style for Aizawa?” Izuku asks as he’s made to put on a suit. 

“Before my time, kid.” 

“Oh,” Izuku says. He’s wondering what Aizawa was like, before blood dripped from his fingers and the light disappeared from his eyes. He’s never seen Aizawa smile, but there is a brief moment that the cameras had caught where Aizawa did. 

“We’ll show them who comes from District Twelve,” Kacchan says when Izuku joins him. “You and me.”

Aizawa was sixteen, one year older than Izuku is now. 

_ Children _ , he thinks.

“You and me,” Izuku echoes.

v.

After Izuku’s interview, Aizawa is waiting for him by the elevator. Kacchan is already gone. 

“Sensei,” Izuku says; they’ve taken to calling him that, and Aizawa, for some reason, has let them. “My- my interview wasn’t too good, huh.” 

“It was fine.” 

Aizawa is a quiet man. Eri said once, proudly, that he used to sing to her; Izuku has not heard a single note.

They step into the elevator, and the doors shut behind them. They pass one floor, then another, in complete silence. 

When they reach the right floor, Aizawa steps forward and holds a button. The doors stay closed. 

“I never thanked you,” Aizawa says. He’s not looking at Izuku, but in the glossy metal of the elevator Izuku can still see his reflection. “For volunteering.” 

Izuku swallows hard. “She- she’s only twelve.” 

“I know.” 

“I— just couldn’t let her.” 

“She means a lot to me,” Aizawa tells him. “Eri is all I have.” 

Izuku looks at Aizawa’s reflection and sees a lonely sixteen-year-old, defeat in his shoulders as he is declared the victor. Dying is a loss. Living is, perhaps, even more so. 

“Why did you volunteer?” 

“Like I said,” Izuku musters, “she’s only a child.” 

“So are you.” Aizawa tilts his head. 

“Do you really think I have a chance?” 

“Giving up is easier,” Aizawa admits, and sighs. “Midoriya. You understand that for you to win, Bakugou will have to die.” 

_ No  _ rushes forward, with the same fire that made Izuku volunteer. He won’t let that happen. 

“We can be different,” Izuku challenges, and Aizawa flinches hard. Aizawa doesn’t flinch. 

“You say that to anyone else and you’ll find a noose around your neck,” Aizawa threatens. Then he lowers his voice, so soft Izuku almost misses his words. “But maybe you can prove me wrong.” 

vi.

“Hey, loser,” Kacchan calls as he heads in Izuku’s direction. He shoves Izuku. 

A few heads turn in their direction as Izuku’s jostled by the movement and stumbles back, then the attention subsides. 

“Kacchan?” 

He’s more confused than he’s insulted. Kacchan’s always been rough around the edges, puffing his chest up to look bigger and meaner to everyone who’s trying to beat him down. There was a time when Kacchan used to think he was better, when the nickname Deku hurt more than it does now, but hunger has eaten away the pride and loss has starved the meat on his bones. Like they do to everyone. 

_ I’m going to win the Hunger Games,  _ Kacchan declares one day in history class. 

_ Sit down,  _ the teacher bites back.  _ You shouldn’t wish to be there at all.  _

“Don’t call me that,” Kacchan says gruffly. He eyes the instructor Izuku’s been working with. “Oi, hell is this?” 

Izuku’s been working with nets, woven strong and heavy lined with metal. A net to ensnare his opponents, a net to catch his prey. 

“What…” Izuku says as Kacchan hefts the edge of a net, testing its weight. 

Kacchan glances sideways at him. “People are watching,” he breathes. “If they find out we’re— friends, it’s over for us.” 

Izuku thinks about that and stays silent.

It takes Kacchan a few times to get the hang of throwing nets, but he’s a fast learner. By the end of a short session, he knows enough to topple a target. Enough to catch someone unawares. 

One of the tributes from District Four has been watching them, drawing her own net and throwing it in a smooth movement she must have learned from living a few steps from drowning. And another girl, younger and smaller, watching with round eyes. 

Kacchan threatens Izuku not to get in the way. Izuku holds his hands up as Kacchan sends him crashing to the floor. 

The girl from Four remains unaware of the thread that, thin and almost invisible as a fishing line, ties them together. 

vii. 

The night before the Hunger Games, Kacchan doesn’t speak to Izuku at all. Izuku can’t sleep. He cradles Mom’s handkerchief and walks the long, narrow hallways, and his hands shake badly. 

A light flicks on. 

“You shouldn’t be up,” Aizawa says. His voice is flat. He isn’t asleep either, and hasn’t slept if the dark circles under his eyes have anything to say about it. “Rest. You’ll need it. This might be your last chance to.” 

“I… can’t,” Izuku admits. “I just keep— I know I- I, it’s just, sensei, I’m—”

Aizawa pauses. “You’re what?” 

Izuku’s breathing stutters, and finally he says it. “I’m scared.” 

For the first time since he volunteered and was drawn into the Hunger Games, Izuku cries. His vision blurs, and he’s hardly aware of when his legs give out as he clutches his handkerchief tight. His lungs scream. He’s going to die. He’s going to die. 

There’s a warm hand pressing down on the back of his neck. Then, carefully and gently, Aizawa draws Izuku into his arms; it’s the kindest touch Izuku thinks he has felt in what seems to be an eternity, and he cracks. 

“I- I don’t—”

Aizawa just holds Izuku, hand still and steady. “I know.” 

“I don’t want to die,” Izuku croaks, when his words return to him. “I want to live. I want Kacchan to live.” 

Aizawa doesn’t say  _ it’s okay _ . He doesn’t say  _ you’ll be fine _ . Instead, Aizawa says, “You know… you two changed my mind about something. Have hope, Midoriya. It will keep you alive.” 

Izuku doesn’t know how to. Hope seems so faraway in this dim hallway, but Aizawa’s touch brings back a piece of it. He is not dead yet.

Aizawa breathes in, and begins to hum.

viii. 

He asks to take Mom’s handkerchief into the arena with him. Strangers take it from him, inspect it—but they conclude it is just a scrap of white fabric. No poison, no weapon, no secrets. 

The day of the Games, Izuku pricks his finger and touches the corner of the handkerchief to it. Red blooms along the edge. 

Aizawa speaks to Kacchan first, then to Izuku. 

Izuku steps into the glass cylinder that will take him into the arena, and Aizawa watches with an unflinching gaze. 

“Eri says to come back,” is the only thing Aizawa says to him. “I’ll kill you if you don’t.” 

“I don’t think that’s how it works,” Izuku says, and a laugh bubbles in his throat. Aizawa meets his gaze as the platform under Izuku’s feet moves up, and the last thing Izuku catches is Aizawa’s nod. Izuku blinks, and the world shifts from glass to open air and the smell of grass. He’s still smiling, just slightly. 

The countdown starts. Izuku looks over at Kacchan. Kacchan is looking away. It hurts even though Izuku understands. 

Around him is a clearing. In the center a cornucopia. And, Izuku notes, a thick, shrouded forest of trees. 

_ You are somebody’s son,  _ he thinks. 

He touches his fingers to the handkerchief in his pocket. The Hunger Games begin. 

ix.

Izuku leans his head against the tree trunk, feeling bark against his cheek. His arm is searing with pain. He hasn’t had water in some time. He’s tired. 

Fifteen tributes are dead. 

Kacchan, at least, is alive. He’d allied with a few of the other tributes until they’d tracked Izuku down. Those tributes are dead. Izuku can’t get the blood out from under his fingernails. 

They haven’t seen each other since.  _ Better to split up,  _ Kacchan said. 

Izuku stares up at the canopy of trees. Sunlight filters through the yellow-green leaves, and so does the sound of birdsong. It’s almost beautiful. 

He gets up and bites back a cry when his sleeve brushes against his burn. 

Hope. He has to hope. He has to live for someone, for something, for anything; and Izuku closes his eyes and pictures Mom, and Eri, and Kacchan. They’re all waiting for him. 

Even here there is light and beauty. 

Izuku keeps going.

x.

The cry cuts through the air. 

Izuku turns his body towards the human sound, so pained it’s almost animal; he hears Kacchan’s voice, angry, always angry, and runs faster. Breaks between a set of trees. 

There’s a body on the ground—the girl from District Four. There’s a hanging net. There’s Kacchan, bloody hands lowering a small figure to the ground, and Izuku’s heart stops in his throat. 

Kacchan looks up. The look on his face is one Izuku has never seen before, and wishes in his heart he will never see again. 

“It’s okay,” Kacchan says, as Izuku steps into a resting place. “It’s- it’s fine. It’s okay. You did good.” 

His voice doesn’t crack. Izuku drops down on his knees as the little girl gasps, red around her mouth. Mahoro, one of the tributes from District Eleven, with small uncalloused hands and a dying spark in her eyes. 

She breathes something, and Kacchan cradles her head. “It’s okay,” he repeats. 

Izuku is useless. He can do nothing. 

Kacchan can’t do anything, either, but he smooths back the little girl’s hair—she’s only twelve—and tells her in a low voice that she’s going home until her chest stops rising. Izuku closes her eyes. 

The cannon booms, once, twice. There are stalks of tall yellow flowers, and Izuku picks them; Kacchan, carefully, gently—words that do not usually belong to him—places the blooms around her. 

“Kacchan,” Izuku says. Kacchan’s eyes are rimmed red and vacant, but he meets Izuku’s gaze and nods jerkily.

They stumble away. Izuku remembers being twelve, and watching a rabbit succumb to a ring of teeth marks around its throat. 

Kacchan doesn’t scream, but he does press his face to Izuku’s shoulder. This grieving must be quiet. He shakes. Kacchan allows himself a minute of harsh breathing before he straightens, and puts the heartache away. 

Izuku holds out his hand. Kacchan takes it. Blood joins them.

They don’t separate after that. 

xi.

Izuku sits with Kacchan, his hands sweaty. 

“Kacchan,” he says, “do you remember when we were kids?” 

“Yeah?” 

“There was this hill, do you remember?” 

By the school, a gentle slope that seems like a mountain to kids who have never seen one. As the years passed, Izuku remembers scrambling to the top still and realizing it has only taken him a few steps. 

“Used to play king of the hill,” Kacchan says. Izuku smiles. He remembers. “I won.” 

“You pushed me down,” Izuku adds, and Kacchan laughs. Izuku could kill him. It would be simple, he thinks, and fast; almost as quick as tumbling to the bottom of a hill. 

“Things changed,” Kacchan says when he stops laughing. 

“What did?” 

“Izuku,” Kacchan says, and shrugs. “I saw you.” 

xii. 

“Are you scared?” Kacchan asks. 

Izuku’s hands are steady. In the curve of one palm are six nightlock berries, dark blue and sweet. In the other is Mom’s handkerchief. 

“No,” Izuku says quietly. “Not with you.” 

They take a deep breath together. You watch your friend die, or you kill each other. 

Kacchan doesn’t count down from three; he starts from twelve, and when he reaches one Izuku tips his head back as one berry passes his lips—

With his other hand, he raises his handkerchief towards the sky. He feels it flutter between his fingers as the Gamemakers tell them to stop—there must be a victor, and they cannot have none—and out of the corner of his eye sees the scrap of white fabric, one corner red. He holds on tight. 

No one can unsee the handkerchief Izuku holds, waving home. It is a white flag; it is a white sail; it is. 

They win. 

The two victors go home together, both of them alive and pressed together. The Hunger Games are over. On the train, Aizawa pours them each a glass of fizzy champagne. He is singing a song Izuku thinks he recognizes.

Izuku runs his finger around the rim of the glass in a perfect circle of tragedy.

The glass breaks. 

Relief settles under Izuku’s skin when District Twelve welcomes its children home, Kacchan’s hand in his. Mom sobs when she sees him. Eri holds Izuku’s sleeve.

They don’t have to say goodbye. They don’t have any promises to break. 

For the first time, there are two victors. Izuku is not alone. Something has changed. Something is different. 

The mountain becomes the hill becomes the ground under Izuku’s feet. 

They have stolen a surrender; and Izuku holds it high above his head fluttering like hope, and the whole world sees it. 

**Author's Note:**

> this one is a little different in tone from _draw and quarter_ , you'll notice; and that's because _draw and quarter_ is about losing to a cycle of repeated tragedy, as much as Aizawa tries to change it, and Aizawa trying to find himself in the aftermath. in the thirteen years that pass, he loses his hope again; but _white sails_ is a story about Izuku and Bakugou truly being "different," and they win. hashtag deep or whatever 
> 
> and the quarter quell fic is just about angst lol that one is just for fun. also i MIGHT write a tiny fic about Aizawa's years in between....
> 
> please be so kind and leave a kudos and comment if you liked this!
> 
> Tumblr: [@queenangst](http://queenangst.tumblr.com)  
> Discord: [Annie's Angst Association](http://discord.gg/m53PtuD)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [hey, man, isn’t it poetic? (that the sky is what we leave behind)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26203501) by [BuiltUpWithCatsAndTeaToMatch](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BuiltUpWithCatsAndTeaToMatch/pseuds/BuiltUpWithCatsAndTeaToMatch)




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